![]() But that "for the most part" is where the work is really done, each Skitarii character does have a personality and each character can be defined by a single trait in my opinion. But injecting them with emotion that they hide away would defeat the character of them as a faction, they are emotionless for the most part and that is how they should be portrayed, which the novel does, but that means it's hard to particularly like them. They are meant to be largely emotionless, which rarely makes for a compelling protagonist, especially when practically every other character is similarly emotionless. well the Skitarii are a tricky prospect in my opinion. The key purpose of this story is to explore the Skitarii as an army, which it quite well, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be enjoyed as more than product-placement, which while the novel does do, it has to, it is not at all blatant and never so distracting that it made me cringe. As the battle for Velchanos Magna gets underway the story begins to shift as the truth behind several events is revealed, rather nicely as well with both immediate consequences for the characters and potential consequences that will likely have to be explored in the sequel. We also get a nice glimpse of the split between tech-priests who roam in space and those attached to a Forge World, the former being trailblazing pioneers with a fierce independent streak, the latter being scheming politicians for whom their own advancement is just as important as their God's will. One interesting part of the story was the book's focus on the Skitarii Legions and how they operate, but also what their standing is in the Mechanicus, their relationship to the tech-priests that command them, to the Machine God and exactly how cybernetically augmented these soldiers are, and how that changes who they are as people. The story in Skitarius was very enjoyable, with quite a few twists that really changed the scale of the story. But a meaningful one that makes the battles feel as though they aren't just Games Workshop battle reports can't be too much to ask? I understand that, with a short novel/novella such as this, you could hardly ask for epic story lines. My overall opinion is that yes, it's pretty good to an extent, but never really threatened to be great. The characters always seems to be devoid of anything that makes them interesting and possessive of utterly annoying, throwaway names that have a tendency render things pretty meaningless at times. I think, other than those in the Horus Heresy series, my hunt for an enjoyable Mechanicum novel may have to be shut down. had me tuning out and treating this as background noise for good portions. Any time I tried to hold onto the meat of the story, conversations about in-depth probability calculations etc. Especially when they feel like they're there simply as filler rather than anything of true substance. There's only so many battles you can sit through before that happens. ![]() I genuinely had high hopes as it started with a good premise, but I lost interest to the extent I forgot what was going on at times. I almost feel like they've tried to boost the appeal by going balls to the walls as far as action goes and, much like your average adept dreams of cutting away their flesh and replacing it with machine parts, Black Library have cut away all thought of a deep, meaningful story and replaced it with lots of gun-fights. It stands out because it keeps the reader interested with battle scenes. but not for depth of story or interesting characters (that seems to be something quite out of the question as far as Mars goes). In a sense, Skitarius does, indeed, stand above other works featuring the cog boys. Having found most things related to the Mechanicus to be quite tedious, the thought that something stood out above those got me a little bit excited. I picked Skitarius up as it was recommended to me by a friend who claimed it was better than your average outing of the Mechanicus.
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